Comic for Thursday, May 19th

I can hear it now ‘god damnit man, did you just introduce 4 more characters?!’ I can’t help it, there are a lot of people involved.

Well, this comic was buffered, but I haven’t quite finished Monday’s comic yet (I’d guess I’ll finish tomorrow or Friday). Means we aren’t going back to 3 a week, but hopefully a little more stable at 2 for now; going to be out for a week in July, so hopefully will get at least enough to cover that (should be fine).

The dropship continues to evolve, this time hewing slightly closer to the original inspirations for it’s design; though, to be clear, this is a different model then we’ve seen before, more military grade.

I should point out an obvious disclaimer. Armor. I decided a long time ago that I was going to include the armor, but it is definitely outside of the range of things I draw well. It will continue to involve as I figure it out, particular if I can ever make semi shiny surfaces look not ridiculous (though this armor is less shiny the the Kor world armor or even the Orish suit). I also need to figure out how to make hair shiny. … I think I’m getting derailed.

Indeed, it seems the rest of the squad is more resigned to whatever mess they are getting tossed into and rather used to his suspicions. Perhaps he’s cried wolf a little much, as this time he seems to be onto something and they aren’t paying him much mind. Of course, they are probably used to their job being a little fishy.

Having a large cast of characters does make it difficult to keep track of everyone. But this goes double if we don’t know their names. That makes it hard for us to empathize with them. Or are these supposed to be disposable characters?

Even so, I feel sorry for Guy1 in panel 2. He’s clearly using his head. He’s justly concerned about their orders and the situation they’re in. But the fact that he has these concerns and voices them to a superior makes me suspect that he won’t be alive for much longer.

Yes, your mission is Situation Instigation. Yes, that’s why your Regional Director said it was classified. If full details surrounding this mission were made public, heads would roll – particularly your Regional Director’s. It’s even worse than you suspect. (I just wanted to tell him that his concerns are valid.)

That Avon pulled out of PACT is surely part of why IDS wants to nail Avon for doing something illegal. IDS’s influence with this world is mostly due to PACT. So they probably want to make an example of Avon. Though, there certainly could be other reasons. Perhaps they want to “confiscate” some of Avon’s illegal tech?

Ah, that’s the tricky part with large casts. I try to draw the line at what I consider point-of-view characters, but already we are at a fuzzy line here, because if none of these characters are a point of view character, whose point of view are we seeing this from? 😛

I would suspect not being told the full details is just sort of part of the job for being in something like the IDS, but I don’t think that makes them happier, especially when it’s quite such a suspicious one.

We’ll see what the IDS is after; they have a lot of reasons to be interested here.

That’s probably the reason, but two of them seem to have matching hair and eyes, so that might just be coincidence.

I’m convinced that there is a code which reveals what a given Designer Child’s abilities are by their hair/eye color. PastUtopia hasn’t said one way or the other, and I’m sure my efforts to figure it out are amusing him greatly. ^^

Well, to be fair there are quite a lot of people in in the IDS that don’t have odd hair colors; even leaving aside foreigners to Malsa, plenty of the locals have normal hair color, though usually black.